


Starting right now I'll be strong

by S_Horne



Series: A May Medley [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cancer, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 09:10:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18736009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/S_Horne/pseuds/S_Horne
Summary: “I was at the hospital.”Steve’s hand froze just as he was reaching into the top of the chest of drawers. There was an open suitcase on the bed next to him and half of his clothes already packed. It was the cowardly thing to do, but Steve couldn’t stand the idea of staying in a house whilst knowing that his partner was spending his nights in someone else’s bed.But then Tony’s words hit him and his blood ran cold. He blinked once, twice. “What?”“The hospital,” Tony repeated, voice flat. He sounded almost defeated, like whatever he was going to say wasn’t going to change Steve’s mind. “When you called me the other day. And when I wasn’t at the office last week. Tuesday, too. In fact, probably every time for the past four months when you’ve wondered where I was. I wasn’t in someone else’s bed. I would have been at the hospital.”ORNational Nurses Day





	Starting right now I'll be strong

**Author's Note:**

> Day Six: _National Nurses Day/Melanoma Monday_
> 
> This story is about a character with cancer.

“You have to tell him.”

Steve slowed to a stop when he heard Rhodey’s voice in the kitchen. Having Rhodey in the house in itself wasn’t unusual, but the serious tone of his voice was. Normally, Steve wouldn’t have stopped to listen, but there was something about how Tony had been acting lately that bothered him and made him slow down to a halt. There had been more and more occasions of Tony’s phone going unanswered or him cancelling dates with Steve. His excuses were getting weaker and weaker as well and Steve was starting to panic. Maybe Tony would be opening up to Rhodey and Steve would finally get some answers.

“I’m not telling him,” Steve heard Tony say.

“You have to.” That was Rhodey. “He deserves to know.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Yes, he does, Tones. It’s not fair on him.”

“If anything,” Tony argued, “it’s fairer. Keeping him in the dark is the best thing for him.”

“It’s lying. You’re lying to him, you know that, right?”

“It’s not lying. It’s, um, it’s omitting. It’s… look, I don’t want him to know. He doesn’t need to know. It’s like telling a child that Santa Claus is real. You know it’s not true, but it keeps them happy, so it’s fine.”

“Tony, I mean it.” There was a pause and Steve felt his breath catch in his throat. God, he shouldn’t be listening to this. It was the perfect example of why eavesdropping was so discouraged. People heard things that they didn’t want to hear. “How many dates have you cancelled now?”

“I have to,” Tony said. “I’m exhausted when it’s over. I just don’t have the energy for date night. I need a bath and my bed. _My_ bed; my real, own bed instead of some stranger’s.”

Steve thought he might be sick. He didn’t want to think about why Tony would be tired after skipping out on meeting up with Steve or leaving work only.

“You have to–”

“No,” Tony snapped, and Steve was taken aback by the venom he could hear in his voice. “Look, I said I don’t want him to know, okay? He doesn’t need to know. He _can’t_ know.”

Steve bit down on the pain he felt at that. He had thought that he and Tony could tell each other anything. There wasn’t anything that Steve didn’t tell Tony. To hear that it didn’t go both ways hurt a lot.

 

 

//

 

“Where were you?”

Tony jumped half a mile and clutched a hand over his heart, throwing down his keys and leaning back against the front door.

“Oh, good God, Steve. Don’t do that to me.”

“Where were you?” Steve repeated, his face dark. He’d told himself that he wasn’t going to get angry and defensive, but that plan had gone out of the window as soon as he’d seen Tony. “Where have you been all day?”

“I told you–”

“Don’t lie to me,” Steve cut in sharply. “I rang the office to see if you had a free twenty minutes for me to take you out for lunch and I was told that you weren’t there. Your cell’s been off as well, for at least two hours. So don’t you dare tell me you were at work.”

“Steve, babe, I–”

“I said don’t lie to me.” Steve pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes. “No lies. Not anymore.”

Tony sighed and Steve felt his glare blacken even more.

“I can’t tell you.”

“You bastard,” Steve snapped and Tony recoiled as though he’d been slapped. “I _trusted_ you. I love you and you’ve thrown that back in my face with this bullshit.”

“You can trust me,” Tony said, reaching his hands out and Steve jumped up from the table. He took a sharp step backwards before Tony could touch him and shook his head. “Steve, you can.”

“I obviously can’t. You’ve done nothing but lie to me for weeks. Lying and hiding. Sneaking out on me, making up shit excuses and getting Rhodey to lie to me as well. You’re either sleeping with someone else or… I don’t even know what else you could be doing. All I know is I won’t do this anymore. I won’t stay here and have you lie to me.” Steve pushed past Tony, looking back over his shoulder as he stormed out of the door. “No more, Tony. No more.”

 

//

 

“Don’t say I told you so,” Tony said as soon as he heard the line had connected.

Rhodey sighed deeply down the phone and Tony punched the couch cushion next to him. _“I wouldn’t. What happened?”_

“He said he couldn’t trust me.”

_“Oh, fuck. How did he find out?”_

Tony dropped his head forward and rubbed his hand across his forehead in a weak attempt to stave off his headache. “He rang the office. I asked Pep to cover for me when I went out, but I didn’t tell the others what was happening. Steve must have gotten one of the girls downstairs and, when asked to talk to me, he got told I wasn’t there. They said I’d be out all afternoon, right after I’d told him I had back-to-back meetings and would be tied to my desk.”

_“Shit. What are you going to do?”_

Tony sniffed loudly and wiped his nose, falling back onto the couch. “I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. I doubt he’ll ever talk to me again. He’s thinking the worst. I know he is; he basically said as much when he yelled at me.”

_“It kind of is the worst, Tones.”_

“Not what he’s thinking,” Tony said angrily. “I wouldn’t do that. There’s no way I’d–”

_“I know, I know. I know you wouldn’t. But that’s where Steve’s mind has gone. Look at it from his view – how many dates have you cancelled in the last month alone? You have to tell him, Tony.”_

There was a long pause before Tony sighed. “I don’t think I can.”

_“Tones–”_

“I can’t. Steve doesn’t need to know. Especially not if he thinks I’ve cheated on him. Why don’t I just let him think that? Let him leave me. He can move on, think that I would do that. A clean and easy break for him.”

 _“And you could do that?”_ Tony bit his lip and covered his eyes with a shaking hand at Rhodey’s voice. Of course Rhodey knew the answer to that question, but that was just how he was. He always pushed Tony further than anybody else did, always made him confront himself. _“You could really let Steve break everything and keep that image of you in his head? You’d be okay with him thinking that lowly of you when you might…”_

Rhodey broke off and Tony swallowed, his throat tight.

“I don’t want to do this, Rhodey,” he whispered. “I don’t want to tell him. He’s going to leave me.”

 _“He’s not going to leave you,”_ Rhodey said quickly, softly. _“I don’t want you to have to tell him about it, either. But you have to, Tones. It’s gonna be okay.”_

“Really?” Of course it wasn’t. Tony knew that, but for some reason he wanted to hear that it would. He didn’t even care that it would clearly be a lie.

 _“Of course it is,”_ Rhodey said without a moment’s pause and Tony felt a sad smile tug at his lips.

“Liar.”

_“Just for you. Now, go and tell him.”_

“Love you, honeybear.”

Rhodey sighed, but Tony could hear the fondness in his tone when he spoke again. _“Love you, too. Ring me later.”_  
  


//

 

“I was at the hospital.”

Steve’s hand froze just as he was reaching into the top of the chest of drawers. There was an open suitcase on the bed next to him and half of his clothes already packed. It was the cowardly thing to do, but Steve couldn’t stand the idea of staying in a house whilst knowing that his partner was spending his nights in someone else’s bed.

But then Tony’s words hit him and his blood ran cold. He blinked once, twice. “What?”

“The hospital,” Tony repeated, voice flat. He sounded almost defeated, like whatever he was going to say wasn’t going to change Steve’s mind. “When you called me the other day. And when I wasn’t at the office last week. Tuesday, too. In fact, probably every time for the past four months when you’ve wondered where I was. I wasn’t in someone else’s bed. I would have been at the hospital.”

Steve kept his eyes straight in front of him for a long moment, his mind jumping in too many directions to focus. With a great effort, he turned to look at Tony in the doorway and swallowed.

“Why?” He cleared his throat when his voice came out hideously hoarse. “Why would you have been at the hospital?”

There was a long pause before Tony took a deep breath and visibly straightened. “Because I have… I have it. You know. _It_. Cancer.”

Steve nodded jerkily and his hands made some sort of aborted movements at his side. “Yeah,” he said stupidly, the sound thick. “Yeah. I got that. I just – oh. _Fuck._ ”

Tony snorted. “Hm. My thoughts exactly.”

Steve didn’t take his eyes from Tony’s as he placed the clothes in his hands onto the bed to the side of him. The action felt far too calm for the thoughts and emotions swimming around in his head and Steve felt like an idiot. He wanted to run across the room to Tony, but he felt rooted to the floor. It was almost as though there were chains gripping him, cold metal digging into his chest and welding him to the carpet. His world had flipped. Everything that he had thought he’d known had been reversed in the space of thirty seconds.

There was so much that he wanted to know, but he wasn’t sure what he should ask. In a horrible way, he wasn’t sure what he could ask.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” That was definitely a big question that Steve needed the answer to.

“I couldn’t.”

Steve gaped. Had he really fucked up that much as a boyfriend? Was he that horrible a partner that Tony could have turned to him when he needed him the most? This was the most difficult time in Tony’s life and he was going through it alone, all because he couldn’t share it with Steve.

Steve could have cried at that thought and he stared over at Tony, heart-breaking at the very idea of him going through any hospital dealings, never mind alone. He closed his eyes as an image of Tony lying in a stark-white bed thrust itself to the forefront of Steve’s mind. Tubes and blood and scans swum around his brain, pictures of Tony curled up on a hard, plastic chair waiting with baited breath for the results of tests. It was vile.

“I’m sorry, Tony. _Fuck_ , I’m sorry. For whatever it was, I’m sorry.”

God, but it was the wrong thing to focus on. Steve knew that he shouldn’t have been making it about himself, but his brain was so full that he just didn’t know what to focus on.

Tony stepped into the room and walked over until he reached the edge of the bed. He reached out slowly and rested his hand on Steve’s wrist, curling his fingers round his arm gently. The touch grounded Steve, comforted him even through a layer of shirt fabric.

“You hate hospitals,” Tony said quietly. “That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

Steve’s mouth dropped open as he processed Tony’s words. The reason that Tony had suffered without him for so long and even led Steve to believe he was cheating was all because Steve didn’t like hospitals?

“You what? Tony–”

“No, Steve. I know what you’re going to say, but it isn’t that–”

“If you finish that sentence with ‘serious’, I’ll scream,” Steve said with a wet sniff. He lifted his hand and pointed at Tony as if daring him to argue.

“It’s not,” Tony said, ignoring Steve. “Really, it’s not that serious. I can handle it.”

Steve took a deep breath and stared straight at Tony. “Well, then. I can too.”

“No,” Tony said, dropping his gaze to the floor for a moment before he looked back up, shoulders pushed back and eyes a little watery. “You couldn’t.”

“If you say it’s not that serious, then it I can clearly handle it.”

“No, it’s not that serious, but I am in hospital a lot. I have to be monitored and checked all the time. I mean it, Steve. It’s a _lot._ I have regular appointments and tests bi-weekly. It’s too much.”

“I can do it.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“Well I want to,” Steve said with a fierce determination. His heart was beating wildly and felt like it was in his throat. The last place he actually wanted to be was a hospital, but he imagined that Tony felt much the same way. He could do it for Tony. “I’d do anything for you.”

Tony smiled, heartbreakingly soft and far too sad. “I know you would. And I love you for it, so fucking much. Which is why I won’t ever, ever let you watch me suffer. I don’t want you anywhere near that place.”

Steve reached out, but Tony leant further away from the touch. It stung, Steve couldn’t pretend that it didn’t even though he tried to keep it from his face.

“Steve, I can’t have you there.”

“And why not? Why can’t I be there to support you? Why the fuck did you hide this from me and shut me out for so long?”

“Because you’ve already done this once!”

Steve was taken aback by Tony’s sudden cry and he jolted back a little. Before he could open his mouth, Tony barrelled ahead, voice loud.

“You did this with your mom, Steve. You had to sit there for tests and results, had to spend hours in waiting rooms and ferry yourself back and forth for visiting hours. It took so much out of you; I know it did. I didn’t want to bring up those memories again. I don’t want you to see her face when you sit at my side.”

Steve took a step forward without even thinking about it. The sheer thought of Tony doing it all alone just to save Steve from having to see it made him want to sob. His heart skipped a beat and before he knew it, he had Tony in his arms.

“I love you, you idiot,” he murmured into Tony’s hair, voice shaking as much as his hands. “I might spend every single session in tears, but I’d do it without caring if it means that you won’t be there on your own. The thought of you going through this makes me want to… I don’t want to think about losing you, Tony. And I really don’t want to think about you sitting there on your own letting your mind conjure up the worst.”

They stood there for a moment, Steve’s arms tight around Tony’s shoulders and his lips against Tony’s temple. Very slowly, Tony’s arms came up and clutched at the back of Steve’s shirt. His hands pulled the material tight across Steve’s stomach, his fingertips digging into the base of Steve’s spine.

“I’m scared,” Tony whispered into Steve’s neck. “I’m so scared, Steve, and I don’t want you to see me like that. I’m not my usual self when I’m there, when I’m waiting for results. I’m a mess. More of a mess than you’ve ever seen me. This isn’t just me tired and hungry; this is a whole new level.”

“I want to be there.” Steve squeezed his eyes shut to hold back his tears and pulled Tony even closer. The embrace was probably tight enough to hurt, but Steve couldn’t find it in himself to loosen his grip. Tony wasn’t cheating on him and that sent relief powering through him. Though what the truth was was so much worse than that, which sent the relief flying away again. “I want to be there for you. No matter what, sweetheart. That was the deal, remember? I don’t want you doing this alone.”

“I’m so scared.”

“I know.” Steve pressed a kiss to Tony’s soft skin. “Oh, God. I know. But you don’t have to do it alone. Please, baby. Let’s do this together.”

“I hate it, Steve. I hate it so much.”

Steve felt Tony’s grip begin to tremble and stroked circles into his shoulders. “How long?”

“Have I had it or have I got left?”

Steve squeezed his eyes shut at the defeat in Tony’s words and pressed his lips to Tony’s head. “Both,” he managed to mumble. “Either.”

“Six months.”

Tony said no more and Steve’s legs nearly gave out. “That’s how long you’ve–”

“Had it,” Tony cut in quickly, his grip tightening so that he could press even closer to Steve’s body. “I’ve had it for six. They can’t give me an answer for the other.”

“I’m so sorry, Tony.” Steve slid one hand up to cup the back of Tony’s head. “What can I do? What can _we_ do?”

“Don’t leave me, Steve,” Tony whispered, his lips brushing Steve’s collarbone. “Don’t ever leave me. Unpack the bag and stay with me.”

 

 

 

 

 

//

 

 

 

“Good afternoon, Mr. Stark.”

Tony looked up from his phone with a bright smile, though it didn’t meet his eyes, hands trembling traitorously. “Afternoon, Nurse Daniels. You’re looking gorgeous, as usual. How are you doing today?”

The nurse smiled softly and gestured to the seats at the edge of the hallway. “I think that’s meant to be my question, darlin’. Go take a seat and I’ll call you in in a moment.” She headed over to the door to the testing room before she paused and looked back. “Are you here on your own today?”

Before Tony could open his mouth to reply, footsteps started to echo down the hall.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m here,” Steve said as he hurried close and dropped down into a seat next to Tony. “I was just scoping out the coffee options for afterwards. They’ve got some nice baked goods in the place over the road, if you need to get your sugar back up?”

Tony grinned and turned to the nurse, reaching out to pull Steve’s hand into his lap and twisting their hands together. “Nope. Not alone.”

Steve looked up and smiled at the nurse. “Good afternoon, Nurse. Lovely to meet you. I’m Steve.”

The nurse’s eyes lit up and she looked over to Tony with raised eyebrows. “The famous Steve. Oh, my lovely, I was starting to think this day would never come. Give me just a few minutes and then we can get this show on the road. I’m going to have so many questions for you.”

Steve laughed and squeezed Tony’s hand. “I’m looking forward to it.”

Tony leant to his side and rested his cheek on Steve’s shoulder. “I’m not gonna be here alone anymore.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [if you still like me, pls check out my tumblr](https://s-horne.tumblr.com/)


End file.
